


Silver-Tipped Poison

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-23 00:02:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18538174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: Credence knew he was no longer a boy when he heard the devil on his shoulder.





	Silver-Tipped Poison

Credence knew he was no longer a boy when he heard the devil on his shoulder.

Maybe not a man entirely, in the ways that mattered - for all that he could have found a job without bending the truth all that much, Ma called him a boy and he knew he had so much to learn. But he wasn't a child either, now the innocence had left him. Somewhere, between one breath and the next, all the shine of his soul had gone - or maybe it had been happening all along, just waiting for his own darkness to grow strong enough to whisper.

It never used words, not exactly. He would hear a low hum, or a hiss, or a purr as sinuous as a cat, and he would know what it wanted. If someone asked, he couldn't have said anything beyond the feeling, to the point where if it weren't for the fact that the thoughts simply weren't his, he would have simply done his penance and that would be enough (or a kind of enough).

The devil didn't want to hurt him - at least, not the way Credence assumed at first. When the kitchen knife met his skin, it had been him, not the devil, who forced it across. Forced it to prove he could still act. That the voice wasn't him.

It silenced the devil, for a little while. He staunched the bleeding and bandaged it with rags and the only thing he felt was echoing horror, like screaming down a tunnel. (He did that sometimes. The subway was warm, dry, and it had heard more of him than anyone else.) Curled up on his mattress, shivering despite the touch of spring in the city, he was free to be appalled at himself.

Almost a month, and then the whispers came back.

One month again.

Then, slowly, three weeks.

Two weeks.

One.

The devil wanted him to blaspheme; to curse his mother; to rage against God's world. As it grew stronger, it murmured in his ears as men passed by in the streets. Not for Credence the simple temptations of the flesh, it seemed, but a lust so perverse he could only think his mother was right to beat him.

It didn't matter how hard he tried, or how often. He stole a knife from a shop, knowing Ma would know if he took one of the church's, trying to justify one sin by preventing another and knowing that God didn't care about humans who only wanted to save themselves. When he didn't have it, handing out leaflets to men whose eyes had started to flicker over him and heat the sin, he dug his nails into his palms and ground his skin against bricks.

He'd been foolish with the knife that day, so overcome and horrified by the thoughts swirling around the man at the meeting - his piercing eyes, his broad shoulders, the long lithe lines of him. Days since then and still the devil fixated, clinging tighter until Credence's vision blurred and all he could see was the man.

He thought the same thing was happening in the alleyway, blood spilling freely. Nothing real could knit skin together so easily, with just the pass of a hand.

Mr Graves was kind. Mr Graves would touch him. And by the time the voice became Mr Graves', it was too late.

The devil had been in Credence the whole time. Mr Graves had wanted the devil, and he was willing to look past Credence to get it.

It was hard to say exactly when Credence first opened his eyes and the devil looked out; hard to say what was dream, what was lost time, what was the wanderings of a mind watching the body try to focus. All he really knew was the time he closed his eyes against it all - the pain, the betrayal - and when the devil came to him, he just said _yes_.

Something reforms in Paris, much later. Something knits itself together from scraps and wisps, until it walks like a man and talks like a man. Its instinct is to duck away, head bowed, and yet when the humans turn away its lip curls. It has no idea who it is; only what it wants. Sharp feelings; instinctive thoughts.

There's a voice which whispers to it. It doesn't like the voice at all: he's so weak, so innocent, and he wants the thing to hurt itself. He feels its head with thoughts of knives and ropes, until it finds the loudest places filled with the brightest lights to drown him out.

Its skin is clean and smooth, the way it wanted. It has no interest in scars. It has no interest in anything but the moment. It takes a name from the voice.

It hopes nobody comes looking for Credence.


End file.
